Assimilation and voluntary integration in France and in the United States of America: A comparative analysis

Abstract

This paper analyzes the ethnopolitical regimes of assimilation and voluntary integration and their theorization in the past and current scholarship. Moreover, an in-depth investigation on these regimes applied to the cases of the United States and France will be conducted on how the regimes of assimilation and integration evolved through the years. The choice of these cases is justified by the fact that the USA and France faced big migration flows, which resulted in the need to integrate all immigrants into the social systems of these countries. In addition, a comparison will be made between the two country cases. As a result, the authors came to the conclusion that some groups of migrants integrate or assimilate better than other, and this outcome could be reduced to linguistic, religious, cultural, or even phenotypical factors. France and the United States have tackled their migrants and minority issues through the years in different ways. Indeed, it is necessary to keep in mind that the dissimilar history of the case countries has influenced the developing of the assimilation or integration approaches. In the USA, it is more of a political integration, since American identity was not a fixed category, but civic nationalism was the main driver; on the other hand, we can define the French strategy as one of cultural integration, since the country already had an established political identity.